Eye On Real Estate

By Lore Croghan

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

There are so many standouts in this artists'/Hispanics'/hipsters' neighborhood that we decided to organize them into a David Letterman-style Top Ten list of the Coolest Places in East Williamsburg.

Yeah, yeah, we know there's lots of online debate among real estate-obsessed Brooklynites about the neighborhood's name. Is it an actual place, or did residential brokers make it up to get higher prices for apartments?

It certainly feels like a place unto itself, with more old-school businesses and more NYCHA developments than in the fancier parts of Williamsburg. Every last inch of property hasn't been bought up and redeveloped quite yet.

As writer Julie Strickland explains in a carefully researched 2012 story on website Brooklyn Based, the name East Williamsburg was used in the mid-to-late 1800s, revived in the 1980s by the men who established the East Williamsburg Industrial Business Zone – and is widely believed to have been “part of common parlance by the 1990s.”

Other neighborhood names are considered legitimate for far flimsier reasons.

There's lots of debate about the area's boundaries as well. We used the ones spelled out on website Brooklyn Exposed: Union Avenue to Bushwick Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue to Flushing Avenue.

If you wish to comment below about East Williamsburg, feel free to weigh in on this neighborhood topic: Is the 49-unit rental apartment building at 76-80 Meserole St., which Eastern Consolidated is marketing for seller Cornell Realty Management, worth its $38.5 million asking price?